Tacky, Tacky, Tacky

April 17, 1985

Drive down International Drive, State Road 436, Interstate 4. You won't get bored. There's plenty to read. Billboards scream at you from every direction about everything.

The Orlando area has grown but not as much as its supply of billboards -- and far too many of them are gigantic, tacky eyesores that blight the landscape of one of the most tourist-dependent areas in the world. Don't the billboard people care?

Look at the endless string of signs lining I-4 as you approach Orlando from the west: cigarettes, dog tracks, flea markets, banks. Along Orlando's International Drive the shabby decor is more creative but just as much a blight. Some of these billboards even change faces. One minute they tell you to hit the festive Church Street Station. Seconds later the message changes: Visit Cape Canaveral.

Cleaning up the clutter should be a matter of pride. What will it be, a city where the focus is on the trees and lakes and inviting architecture or a city where you can't see the forest for the signs?

A billboard study committee has recommended that Orlando limit billboards to no more than 288 square feet and that the tops of them be no higher than 30 feet above the ground. Billboard owners would have five years to replace signs that don't meet those standards. Today the committee will consider recommending a ban on billboards in certain heavily developed areas such as downtown, Orlando International Airport and International Drive. That's a solid proposal.

Orlando's city council will make the final decision on billboards later this year. To the city's credit, billboards already are banned in residential areas. It makes sense to extend that ban into areas such as International Drive that already are overrun with signs on commercial buildings. These are heavily developed areas with equally heavy traffic that is slowed even more by the sign confusion. These areas don't need more signs.

A limit on the size of billboards would be equally effective. Smaller signs really are less of an eyesore. What's more, the 288-square-feet limit is plenty of space for an advertiser's message. That's the size of most billboards that now advertise 7-Eleven stores in the Orlando area.

A number of communities already have taken major steps to curb the visual pollution. Maitland has banned billboards. Hillsborough County's planning department is proposing a billboard ban that would remove all signs in a year. Tampa appears ready to limit the number, the size and the location of billboards. Officials there say that 94 percent of the billboards in Tampa now wouldn't meet the new requirements. That's a measure of just how bad the sign pollution has become.

Orlando is moving in the right direction. There's no reason that aesthetics have to be sacrificed to billboard monsters along every road. Smaller really is better. Fewer would be best.